Research

This course is intended to introduce students to the main types of demographic data, and prepare them to successfully collect their own data. There is a focus on collecting data in developing countries. We will look at surveys and other instruments that...Read More..

We estimate the effect of a large workfare program in India on private employment and wages by comparing trends in districts that received the program earlier relative to that received it later. Our results suggest that public sector hiring crowds...Read More..

Height is a marker for health, cognitive ability and economic productivity. Recent research on the determinants of height suggests that postneonatal mortality predicts height because it is a measure of the early life disease environment to which a cohort is...Read More..

Despite high rates of internal migration, India is urbanizing relatively slowly. This paper uses new data from rural, northwest India to study short-term migration to urban areas and its role in rural livelihoods. First, we demonstrate the importance of data...Read More..

Early-life health shapes cognitive skills and human capital. In India, widespread open defecation without using a toilet is an important source of childhood disease. We study the effects on childhood cognitive achievement of early-life exposure to India’s Total Sanitation Campaign...Read More..

We study the effect of a large rural public works program on short-term migration from rural to urban areas in India. Using cross-state variation in public employment provision for identification, we find that participation to the program significantly reduces short-term...Read More..

Using data from the National Crime Records Bureau and the National Family Health Surveys, this article estimates, conservatively, the under-reporting of violence against women in India. I calculate under-reporting of sexual and physical violence, both for violence committed by “men...Read More..

Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policy-makers that it constitutes a health and human capital crisis, open defecation remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. Indeed, 67% of rural Indian households in the 2011 census reported defecating...Read More..

Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policy-makers that it constitutes a health and human capital crisis, open defecation remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. Indeed, 67% of rural Indian households in the 2011 census reported defecating...Read More..

The Janani Suraksha Yojana, India’s “safe motherhood program,” is a conditional cash transfer to encourage women to give birth in health facilities. Despite the program’s apparent success increasing facility-based births, quantitative evaluations have not found corresponding improvements in health outcomes....Read More..

Although most people in India defecate in the open without using a latrine, and most people in the world who defecate in the open live in India, the fraction of households in India who defecate in the open decreased between...Read More..

Abstract: Despite profoundly negative health consequences of indoor air pollution, most rural Indian households cook using traditional biomass fuel, rather than cleaner cooking fuel. Although many factors contribute to households’ continued use of solid fuels, this paper focuses on one: women’s intra-household status. We...Read More..

What are the relationships between wealth and children’s health in India’s states that are as populous as many other countries? Presenting a state-level analysis of the association between state net domestic product per capita and three children’s health indicators, this...Read More..

Children in West Bengal and Bangladesh are presumed to share the same distribution of genetic height potential. In West Bengal they are richer, on average, and are therefore slightly taller. However, when wealth is held constant, children in Bangladesh are taller. This gap can be fully accounted for by...Read More..

Poor people often exhibit puzzlingly high sensitivity to low prices of important consumer health goods. This paper proposes decision costs as one explanation: whether a person buys at a price depends on whether she carefully considers the offer, which itself depends on...Read More..

Even compared with neighbouring countries, latrine use is especially uncommon in India. How might caste – historically associated with sanitation inequality – interact with government sanitation policy?Using data from Rajasthan state, we investigate the effect of caste-based reservations for village chairmen...Read More..